So this year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and, as has become custom on this blog, I thought we could do a celebratory group reread
Rules and general info:
The pace set for the reread will be one chapter a day during the week and two chapters a day at the weekend. You are obviously allowed to read at whatever pace you want but I’ve found it works best to set a slow pace so people with hectic lives can still get involved
This means the reread will be happening from the 8th-25th of July with the 8th marking the actual 20th anniversary
On this blog I’ll be posting my thoughts on each chapter, artwork, and a discussion question for each chapter so feel free to get involved with that!
However you are obviously allowed to get involved in this reread however you want- art, videos, your thoughts throughout the reread, reading in a new language; there are loads of great ways to get involved!
Just make sure to use the tag #hogwartsreread so we can all join in on each other’s discussions and hopefully make some new friends!
Reblog if you’re interested so we can get as many people involved as possible! I’ll be posting reminders as we get closer to the day but I’m so excited and hopefully you guys are looking forward to it too!
Okay, but Ron’s 13-year-old-boy “Ew, girlfriend” thing is so cute, though.
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Harry, of course, persists in his pattern of, “Must Immediately Tell Ron and Hermione.” Adorable.
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“This way, you haven’t broken your word to Fudge and I know what’s going on.” Harry, sweetie, your Slytherin is showing.
Also:
Arthur: Someone’s trying to kill you! Aren’t you scared?
Harry: LOL, must be Thursday.
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And then two seconds later, “Why would I go looking for someone I know wants to kill me?”
Harry, honey, Arthur’s met you. Like, I love how much Arthur just has this child’s number, more than Harry does himself at this point.
Harry’s kind of on to them after this book, though.
Adult: Don’t go do anything stupid!
Harry: Okay, well, that hadn’t occurred to me previously, but if people keep telling me not to do the stupid thing there must be some compelling reason for me to do it, so, Stupid Idea, here comes Harry!
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Poor Ginny, just getting totally brushed off by her big brother like that :(
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“He looked ill and exhausted.”
So 1 September 1993 was like the night of the full moon. Are we looking at Wolfsbane side effects, or is it a matter of transforming for all three nights the moon is “full”?
Or is it just a coincidence, JKR didn’t look the date up (which is fine, I’m just especially obsessive about that kind of thing), and we’re seeing Remus’s general state of ill health and exhaustion?
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Honestly, though, Harry and Ron being all like, “Harry would never go looking for trouble!” is so funny having read the rest of the series.
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Why doesn’t anyone think of forgery with this d**n permission slip?
No, I am not going to let that go!
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Or you could ask Fred and George to forge it, instead of getting the secret passages off them. You’re almost there, Ron...
Slytherin!Harry would have thought of this by now.
Yes this is right up there with “why didn’t they shoplift at Tesco during the Horcrux hunt” for plot holes to me, I’m sorry. Like I literally arranged things in my big next-gen fic to have Albus forging a friend’s permission slip because this oversight bugs me out of all proportion.
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In other news, “Died in his sleep on the train on the way to school” would be an especially efficient year for the Defense Professor curse.
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Does anyone else feel like Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle have, like, theme music whenever they turn up? Something with tubas?
Maybe I just watched too much Power Rangers. Like I hear them having the same sound track bits as Bulk and Skull. (Did they really have sound track bits, r is that my imagination, too?)
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“Harry ... got to his feet, too, in case he needed to hold Ron back.”
Ron punching Draco Malfoy is an entire aesthetic.
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Okay, so.
Hermione’s got a watch. One that works at Hogwarts, presumably, which means it’s all clockwork, no electronics, not the norm in kids’ watches even in the ‘90s.
Posit: Hermione’s supply list included a note that she’d need one. She knows she’s going to need to keep careful track of time. And later she doesn’t seem surprised to be called to McGonagall’s office. Was there something about the time turner in her supply list? Did her parents maybe even have to consent to their daughter using time travel to arrange her timetable?
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Okay, so, post-dementor, Ron and Hermione are pretty much okay. Worst that’s happened to them, so far, are Aragog and getting petrified, respectively.
Neville’s awfully shaky. Well, Neville has hardly had an idyllic childhood.
And Ginny’s almost as bad as Harry. (Do we feel sad, that everyone’s ignoring her to fuss over Harry? Or happy for her that at least she doesn’t have to put up with the indignity? Cause you know that after last year, the last thing Ginny needs is to also be the kid that got scared by the Dementors.)
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Neville, I love you, but why did you think Malfoy needed that information?
No, never mind. It probably went something like, “Shut up, Malfoy, it came right into the compartment! Everyone was scared! Harry even fainted!”
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Love that Madam Pomfrey is already just Done with Harry’s nonsense.
There’s something profoundly sad about Dudley having no genuine connection to either his father or his aunt even as they want to engage with him...it’s like Dumbledore says in HBP, isn’t it? They’ve succeeded in just totally warping how he relates to other people. It’s awful, and it says a lot about Dudley that he finds a new way to relate to the world later on. It’s not easy to do that, especially when your parents have always Loved You.
The glimpses we get into Harry’s childhood through his memories of Aunt Marge...Petunia and Vernon Drop Dead Challenge.
Who takes the Azkaban photos and do they need to be replaced every year because it’s the Worst Job in the world?
How does the magical legal system work within the Muggle one? Say I’m a wizard and kill someone without magic, and the Muggle police bring me in. Do I...go to Muggle prison? Is there a loophole wizards try to exploit so if they get caught it’s under Muggle jurisdiction, and they don’t have to deal with Azkaban?
“He had never been in a worse fix.” Okay Harry, you’ve literally faced death twice now. Seriously though, Harry being able to face Voldemort but not running away and being expelled is truly a mood.
Also he’s right, he should probably have at least spotted an owl by now but I guess the ministry isn’t really too concerned about it.
Harry just assuming that he’ll have to live the life rest of his life as a fugitive, hiding under the Cloak is also a mood.
Woah, Harry cast Lumos and I was immediately thrown back to the movie when he was just using that spell willy-nilly at the Dursleys and nothing happened. Let’s go movies, A+ consistency there. Underage magic is a problem in Chamber of Secrets and Order of the Phoenix but not in Prisoner of Askaban according to the movies. (Actually, I might be remembering that scene wrong because it’s been awhile, but there was something like that, right?)
Sirius is such a freaking drama queen, showing up like that to Harry. He wasn’t really just trying to hide himself, he’s like “I am a big black dog and that is scary, let’s go see my godson, I am smart and not dramatic at all.” Whatever. He could have hidden better or something, but that was mostly on purpose, I think.
For some reason I always think that Stan is really old, but he’s really not.
“Muggles are just dumb” is the explanation Harry gets for the Knight Bus when things like disillusionment charms exist and they have like magic.
Where the heck did Sirius get his hands on a gun?
Oh wait never mind, he doesn’t have one, the muggles just think he does, whoops
“You outta your tree?” Is a saying I have never heard before
People really are thinking the absolute worst about Sirius, other death-eaters? Nah, Sirius was the worst of the bunch when others have definitely killed more than he supposedly did.
Still thinking about you the fact that Sirius never got a trial, that’s messed up, reeeeaaaaally messed up. Like really, what was going on with that?
Harry comparing himself to a supposed mass-murderer for blowing up Marge is another mood and something I would do.
Also Stan and Ernie pretending they had Harry on the bus.
Hey there, Fudge, it’s never really a pleasure to see you but, uh, hi.
If I’m being honest, I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the whole ministry and blowing up Marge thing. Like yay for no punishment but they really shouldn’t just brush it off like that. It’s vaguely concerning.
Harry really deserves to know that Black is supposedly after him, really he does.
I mean, I know that Remus gets really caught up when he sees Peter's name on the Map, so I can understand how he might forget about his potion. But Lupin is so conscientious that it seems really unlikely that he would forget about the full moon when they decided to whom Pettigrew would be chained and then left the Shack
This also raises some questions about how the werewolf transformation works. All other evidence suggests that the transformation occurs on the full moon even if the werewolf does not see the moon or feel the moonlight; Remus transforms in his office, and as a student is smuggled out before moonrise and then transforms in the shack. Both would put him out of the path of moonlight. But here he does not transform until the moon comes out from behind a cloud. There is no sense that this is the moment the moon is fully risen or anything, because it's late at night. It just comes out, and that appears to be the cause of the transformation. What's that about?
Also, when is Remus supposed to take his potion? Earlier in the book Snape takes it to him in the afternoon. It's evening when Remus sees Peter on the Map and runs out. Why hadn't he already taken it? Is it timed according to moonrise?
What do werewolves look like? Here it's not described very well, we can't tell if Remus looks more like a real wolf or more like the weird creature from the movies. When Tonks's patronus changes it's described as a weird creature, not as reminiscent of a wolf, but when Harry sees the memory we learn that the differences between wolves and werewolves seem minor enough to be tricky. What is the truth
I just want this book to have ended with Remus staying to teach, Pettigrew being imprisoned, and Sirius taking Harry from the Dursleys so that he and Remus can raise him together (I love Sirius but the man should not be solely responsible for an already reckless teenager). This cannot happen which I guess is what fanfic is for.
Sirius, breaking my heart every second of the day
Despite it literally leading to Voldemort rising again, Dumbledore probably thinks of Pettigrew getting away as a narrow escape. If they had got Pettigrew back, either Dumbledore would have had to show his manipulative side and refuse to believe Sirius' innocence (losing Harry's trust as well as Remus' and probably some others if they started telling people), or let Pettigrew stand as evidence and let Sirius be exonerated, therefore meaning that Harry moves out of the Dursleys' house early and breaks the ward that hides him there. It's already pretty clear that Dumbledore probably didn't bother to push for a trial for Sirius or to even try to check if he was guilty because if Sirius was free he would take Harry and Dumbledore couldn't allow that.
How is Snape still knocked out? That must have been a very powerful spell.
I reiterate that Dementors are clearly not suitable guards for a prison as they try to give the Kiss to someone they have not been sent after even to arrest and bring back. They aren't sentient enough to distinguish it, they're just looking for food. I feel like, when Voldemort recruits them, it's less like recruiting groups of sentient creatures like giants and more like 'recruiting' a pack of wild dogs-- they follow because you feed them and let them run wild.
Prongs Prongs Prongs my other lad, present only in spirit, i still love him almost as much as Remus and Sirius
Okay, so in the first chapter, it states that Voldemort is "the most feared Dark wizard for a hundred years" (PoA chpt 1 pg6), but if that's true, then that means Grindelwald wasn't that big of a threat. OR that the fight between Grindelwald and Dumbledore happened much earlier than the new movies would suggest. OR that Harry never learned about Grindelwald, which, considering his History of Magic teacher, isn't all that hard to believe.
“His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, His hair is as dark as a blackboard. I wish he was mine, he's really divine, The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”
